Simultaneous phenol degradation and bio energy production in a tubular microbial fuel cell

In this study a scalable tubular microbial fuel cell with mixed culture bacteria (as an oxidation biocatalyst) was designed and used for phenol degradation and energy production simultaneously from wastewater of petrochemical industry. The maximum degradation percent by MFC was 75% in 150 ppm phenol initial concentration. The results indicated that the decrease of phenol concentration in wastewater as the substrate resulted in reduction of the power density. The maximum current density and output voltage achieved in this study were 101mA.m-2 and was 471 mv, respectively. The results demonstrated a close relation between power production and phenol removal rate in the MFC. Current generation accelerated the removal of phenol and the highest degradation rates of 0.035 h-1 was obtained in MFC. The consequence of this study is promising for economical scale-up of microbial fuel cell for phenol degradation purposes

Keywords:

Microbial fuel cell , Phenol , Bio energy , Scalable MFC